I'm stuck in the war gamers doldrums, and I don't mean a belt of calms and light winds between the northern and southern trade winds of the Atlantic and Pacific. I mean stagnation: a state of inactivity (in business or art etc). I think many gamers go through this. Periods of low motivation, in which the act of painting and modeling loses it's appeal. My longest strech lasted six years - I'm feeling it again now.
The fact is I have plenty to paint, and plenty to model, but I'm having a hard time 'wanting' to. I'm finding excuses not to paint far too easily. Take last weekend as an example. I had two days off before the weekend, and ended up with a wonderful four day weekend. Exactly how much painting did I do? Squat. And not the unmentionable lost race in 40k, I mean nothing.
So how do I get out of the slump? Gaming helps, but I'm nearly two weeks away from the next game, and I found that even leading up to the last game, I was still pretty unmotivated.
The fact is the tournament gave me such a charge and a firm deadline I painted hell for leather just to get there in time. Now, with no tournament on the horizon, my motivation is waning again. Perhaps I need to start planning my list for the next tournament - or maybe I just need to make sure I'm painting at least every other day. Either way, I don't want to give up and go another six years, so I need to find something to motivate me again.
One thing I will try to do shortly is to post some close up shots of my tournament models. Most are not 'done' painting wise (they still need highlighting) but I'll put up some pix of the ones which are done - like my big mek, or my Nob Bikers. Maybe that will motivate me to paint the rest.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Fields of Blood 2009
On September 19-20 2009 I entered my first ever tournament. Given how long I've been playing 40k, you would think I would have entered the tournament scene a long time ago, however tournaments have a reputation as brutal cut throat affairs that always put me off - I'm in this game for the fun after all, winning is secondary.
Well, at least when it comes to Fields of Blood, nothing could be further from the truth. The whole event was fantastic, every player was friendly, helpful and really just looking for a good time, and so the whole thing was much more of a 'Warhammer 40k party' than a competitive event.
I played OK - I was fighting off the flu the whole weekend so had a splitting headache for much of the time, and never seem to have enough time between games to eat or take breaks, so it was a bit of an endurance test too. On the positive side, I got to see some amazingly painted armies, and met some fantastic people.
This is the army I fielded:
It's made up of the following:
A Big Mek with a power claw and a kustom force field
Warboss on Bike with Power Claw
6 Nobz on Bikes, with 2 power claws and two 'Uge choppas and a boss pole
20 shoota boyz with 2 big shoota and a Nob with power claw, 'eavy armour and boss pole, in a Battle wagon with a Kannon, big shoota, deff rolla and red paint job
2x12 choppa boyz with a Nob with power claw, 'eavy armour and boss pole, mounted in trukks with rams and red paint jobs
10 burna boyz in a Battle wagon with a big shoota, deff rolla and red paint job
10 Lootas in a Battle wagon with a big shoota
I won three games and lost three.
My first game was against a Khorne demon army. I deployed badly, which is to say I deployed at all. I've found the best tactic when playing against all-deep-strike armies is to stay off the table in reserve to rob them of the initiative. This means I lose turn one altogether, and makes my entry to the table a bit random, but it eliminates a pretty powerful advantage for the enemy. At any rate, I didn't do that this time, putting everything but my Trukk mobs on the table. Craig, my opponent, deep striked just out of assault range, soaked up the firepower I could muster, then charged me. From memory It was not quite a wipe out, but it was pretty close to one. In my defense, the table may as well have been a clear board, based on the way it was set up - but that would have worked in my favour if I had put more thought into it.
My second game was against Necrons - this was a much closer game, which ended in a draw. When this happens, you tally up how many points of units you killed vs. your opponent, and if there is a 500 point margin, the leader wins. I had used my expensive Nob bikers and warboss to soak up the Necron shooting in turns one and two, which protected my force well, but cost me the game due to the points they gave up at the end. So while the mission was a draw, this counted as a loss.
My third game was against Eldar (sorry, no picture). I was warmed up by this point, and had learned some of the particulars of the tournament bonus points system, and the 'tie breaker' rules. I also picked up on a comment the Necron player had made - I was playing defensively. He didn't actually say that - what he said was 'I'm not used to an Ork player who holds back so much' but that was the gist of it, and the main mistake I had been making. No more. So this game I threw everything I had forward, and it paid off. I wiped out every single Eldar unit. I'm not sure, but that may be the only time I've every actually achieved a wipe out. I was patting myself on the back until the Eldar player said he had been wiped out in all three games - so I guess my win was as much due to his playing as my own. Oh well, it was my first actual victory, so I savoured it.
Sunday morning I got up bright and early and was ready for round four. My next opponent was using Sisters of battle - an army I have never played before. He was ready for me - I played aggressively and charged his lines, but he used a combination of Rhino walls and flamers to toast many of my boys, and used the thrice damned missile tanks to put great amounts of hurt on my Nobz. In the end I lost, but it was actually pretty close.
Game five was against Nurgle Demons. I used the lessons learned from my first demon battle and held my army in reserve, which worked a treat. Nurgle forces are pretty slow once they hit the table. Add to that some bad reserve roles by my opponent, and overall I did very well, ending in a decisive victory for the Orks.
Game six I played a very classic Space marines army (sorry, no picture of this one either) - in many ways similar to my Blood Angels force - which meant I knew where the soft spots were. Using my truks to hold objectives, I sent my Nobz and Wagons after his left flank, ignoring his right flank. He deployed spread across the table, and there were huge buildings providing good line of sight blocking, so I was able to divide his force in two, and only had to deal with one half. By the time he bought the rest of his force over, the battle was decided - almost. In turn six a desperate fight between one of my boyz mob and his librarian left only my Nob alive, who was able to run to the objective after killing the wierdbeaky with his power claw. There was a land raider hot on his heels, so if the game ended I would win, but if there was another turn, he would likely gun down my Nob in a hail of assault cannon fire. I gave the Marine player the dice and had him roll to see if we would play another turn. To my relief, the game ended, and in a role of the die victory was mine.
All in all it was a blast. It turned out I was given the lowest comp score in the tournament however, so ended up ranking pretty low. But who cares - I had lots of fun - and now I have a painted 1750 point force!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
When a huge footslogging horde isn't enough
I'm a big fan of WH40K Apocalypse. The fact is, when you have a collection as large as mine, it's the only time my army gets to really shine. It's also a great place to experiment, as in a big game the odd ineffective unit makes little difference to the end result. I'll often use Apocalypse to test out particular combinations of units, formations and super heavies.
The last two games I played were examples of what works and what doesn't when running big Ork lists in games with a lot of super heavies and firepower. In the first game I took a list along the following lines (some details may vary)
2 Stompas and 1 Big Mek Stompa in the Stompa Mob formation
3 Fighta Bombas
3 mobs of 19 boyz with Nobz and a Warphead in each mob, transported in each Stompa.
A battlewagon with Deffrolla carrying 15 burna boyz
Now this list was a bit of a departure for me as it was missing two units I almost always deploy - Nob bikers and Lootas, but I figured the Stompas would more than make up for the lack of firepower (they did) and the Stompas would also make up for the lack of close combat assault troops (they didn't).
The list played devastatingly well. The scenario, which I designed, had the Orks and Chaos allies marching across a 48" no-mans land with little cover to assault a fortified base with force field. I'll post the scenario details next time, but sufficve to say a 48" no mans land is a wee bit big when your lucky to get in four turns. That said the Warpheads came into thier own in turn three, deep striking their mobs onto the objective, while the Stompas played havok with the space marines. I took the 'Disruptor Beacon" assett, which worked brilliantly, as most of the enemy was made up of drop podding space wolves, which I was able to scatter very effectively about 18" in front of my Stompas (they were trying to drop behind me) which gave all my short range weapons something to kill. The lifta droppa also really qworked well - I picked up one Vindicator tank in a line breaker formation and dropped it on the other two. I immobilised all three, and destroyed the demolisher cannons on the two front facing tanks, with the third tank pointing off the table at the board edge where it couldn't shoot anything! Suffice to say the marines put a lot of effort into shooting at the Big Mek Stompa the next turn, and ended up popping the lifta-droppa so I didn't get much more fun - but boy was it a blast!
The following game I tried a different 'elite' style list:
Ghazkulls Bully Boyz:
Ghaz and 6 Mega Nobz in a Battle Wagon with Deff rolla and Kannon.
3 mobz of 10 Nobz in trukks with mixed power claws and painboyz, each led by a warboss.
A stompa
A green tide of 100 boyz led by a warboss and a warphead.
The problem with this list was apparant early on - too many eggs in one basket, and not enough targets to spread the incoming fire around. In turn one the green tide and the Stompa took most of the enemy fire, and thus the stompa died before firing a single shot. In my turn 1 I rolled for my warphead power and got a 1, so I re-rolled and got a 5, Ere We go. Now this meant the green tide would end up in a tightly packed circle somewhere, making it a prime target for any templates, so I took a bit of a risk and teleported it into what appeared to be a big cluster of imperial guard units. I scattered well, but then discovered that my opponents had merely placed their reserves on the table as a place to store them, and subsequently when they removed them I was actally out in the open behind imperial lines with nothing nearby to discourage scattering template shots. Suffice to say the whole tide was wiped out to a man in the next round of imperial shooting. That left my reserves, the three trukks and battlewagon, which I could only bring on half. I rolled on the wagon and one Trukk into the right flank using our teams flank march asset, and wiped out a 20 strong squad of Necrons, but then took a massive amount of fire which wiped out everything except the warboss leading my Nobz. At this point I had a sole warboss on the table, and two truks in reserve, and we had hardly made a dent in the enemy forces.
Turn three rolls around, and I decide to bring on my reserves at the opposite end of the table. Taking a closer look at my chaos allies and thier deployments, I see an objective with nothing near it 12" from our table edge, and another objective with only a small necron squad led by a lord. I suggest to one of the chaos generals that he concentrates on killng the Necrons, while my Nobz roll on at flat out speed to sit on the objectives. The last demon prince deep strikes onto one of the objectives held by the space woplves, and the other chaos general tries to blast the Necrons off another objective (unsuccessfully). Midnight rolls around so turn three ends up being the last turn, and given we are playing 5th edition rules for holding objectives, we have two objectives held, the imperial lapdogs hold one, one is contested, and the other two are not held by either side - go US! We win, but the game honestly felt like a thrashing. Go figure. I took away a few lessons:
1 - Boyz are expendable, you can lose a hundred of them in turn one and still win!
2 - Rember the redundancy rule - Orks need to have multiples of each unit to be effective. Don't take one green tide, take two! And for that matter, flank march em!
3 - 2500pts of Nobz in four units is overkill and frankly was a big waste. The free 'Rok Em Boyz strategem is just too random to be useful, and the work done by the Nobz could have been achieved by normal trukk boyz.
The last two games I played were examples of what works and what doesn't when running big Ork lists in games with a lot of super heavies and firepower. In the first game I took a list along the following lines (some details may vary)
2 Stompas and 1 Big Mek Stompa in the Stompa Mob formation
3 Fighta Bombas
3 mobs of 19 boyz with Nobz and a Warphead in each mob, transported in each Stompa.
A battlewagon with Deffrolla carrying 15 burna boyz
Now this list was a bit of a departure for me as it was missing two units I almost always deploy - Nob bikers and Lootas, but I figured the Stompas would more than make up for the lack of firepower (they did) and the Stompas would also make up for the lack of close combat assault troops (they didn't).
The list played devastatingly well. The scenario, which I designed, had the Orks and Chaos allies marching across a 48" no-mans land with little cover to assault a fortified base with force field. I'll post the scenario details next time, but sufficve to say a 48" no mans land is a wee bit big when your lucky to get in four turns. That said the Warpheads came into thier own in turn three, deep striking their mobs onto the objective, while the Stompas played havok with the space marines. I took the 'Disruptor Beacon" assett, which worked brilliantly, as most of the enemy was made up of drop podding space wolves, which I was able to scatter very effectively about 18" in front of my Stompas (they were trying to drop behind me) which gave all my short range weapons something to kill. The lifta droppa also really qworked well - I picked up one Vindicator tank in a line breaker formation and dropped it on the other two. I immobilised all three, and destroyed the demolisher cannons on the two front facing tanks, with the third tank pointing off the table at the board edge where it couldn't shoot anything! Suffice to say the marines put a lot of effort into shooting at the Big Mek Stompa the next turn, and ended up popping the lifta-droppa so I didn't get much more fun - but boy was it a blast!
The following game I tried a different 'elite' style list:
Ghazkulls Bully Boyz:
Ghaz and 6 Mega Nobz in a Battle Wagon with Deff rolla and Kannon.
3 mobz of 10 Nobz in trukks with mixed power claws and painboyz, each led by a warboss.
A stompa
A green tide of 100 boyz led by a warboss and a warphead.
The problem with this list was apparant early on - too many eggs in one basket, and not enough targets to spread the incoming fire around. In turn one the green tide and the Stompa took most of the enemy fire, and thus the stompa died before firing a single shot. In my turn 1 I rolled for my warphead power and got a 1, so I re-rolled and got a 5, Ere We go. Now this meant the green tide would end up in a tightly packed circle somewhere, making it a prime target for any templates, so I took a bit of a risk and teleported it into what appeared to be a big cluster of imperial guard units. I scattered well, but then discovered that my opponents had merely placed their reserves on the table as a place to store them, and subsequently when they removed them I was actally out in the open behind imperial lines with nothing nearby to discourage scattering template shots. Suffice to say the whole tide was wiped out to a man in the next round of imperial shooting. That left my reserves, the three trukks and battlewagon, which I could only bring on half. I rolled on the wagon and one Trukk into the right flank using our teams flank march asset, and wiped out a 20 strong squad of Necrons, but then took a massive amount of fire which wiped out everything except the warboss leading my Nobz. At this point I had a sole warboss on the table, and two truks in reserve, and we had hardly made a dent in the enemy forces.
Turn three rolls around, and I decide to bring on my reserves at the opposite end of the table. Taking a closer look at my chaos allies and thier deployments, I see an objective with nothing near it 12" from our table edge, and another objective with only a small necron squad led by a lord. I suggest to one of the chaos generals that he concentrates on killng the Necrons, while my Nobz roll on at flat out speed to sit on the objectives. The last demon prince deep strikes onto one of the objectives held by the space woplves, and the other chaos general tries to blast the Necrons off another objective (unsuccessfully). Midnight rolls around so turn three ends up being the last turn, and given we are playing 5th edition rules for holding objectives, we have two objectives held, the imperial lapdogs hold one, one is contested, and the other two are not held by either side - go US! We win, but the game honestly felt like a thrashing. Go figure. I took away a few lessons:
1 - Boyz are expendable, you can lose a hundred of them in turn one and still win!
2 - Rember the redundancy rule - Orks need to have multiples of each unit to be effective. Don't take one green tide, take two! And for that matter, flank march em!
3 - 2500pts of Nobz in four units is overkill and frankly was a big waste. The free 'Rok Em Boyz strategem is just too random to be useful, and the work done by the Nobz could have been achieved by normal trukk boyz.
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